Author: Jack Corrao iii

Streamlining Planning & Forecasting with Salesforce CPF

Sales planning and forecasting is a crucial aspect of any business, as it helps organizations anticipate their future sales and align their resources accordingly. However, the traditional approach to this process can be tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone, leading to frustration for CEOs, marketing teams, sales managers, product managers, and financial teams. Fortunately, with advancements in technology, there is a more efficient and accurate solution. In this blog, we will explore the pain points of the sales planning and forecasting process and how Salesforce customer planning and forecasting (CPF) can streamline the entire process, saving time and providing more accurate predictions for all involved parties.

CEO
The CEO is typically responsible for setting the overall strategy of the company, including sales and marketing goals. They may have final approval on all major decisions related to customer planning and forecasting. Even though they’re not as hands-on in the planning and forecasting process as Sales Managers and Product Managers are, they still have issues that can be solved with an enhanced customer planning and forecasting tool.

    • Lack of visibility into departmental progress: Since they’re not as involved in the process, CEOs need to be able to review the progress of each department when it’s convenient for them. Due to running the company, sometimes that review time comes at 8 pm or other times when their employees aren’t working. They can’t afford to wait for department heads to both collect and then send the necessary information. At that point, the data is already outdated and could be filled with manual errors.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a platform where CEOs can check in on the progress of each department at any time of the day with confidence that the data is in real-time. This helps them know which delegation activities work best for certain department heads, and reveal those that need improvement.
    • Outdated Technology: Unbeknownst to most CEOs, the planning and forecasting technology their company uses is hindering their team’s performance and costing them revenue. Spreadsheets continue to become outdated as consumer behavior has drastically changed since 2019. This technology can’t support the thousands of equations required within the forecasting process. And using multiple, disconnected systems to accomplish this entire process is too time-consuming and error-prone.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF is the ultimate tool to run every step of the sales planning and forecasting process in today’s world. With three major updates per year, CEOs can be confident that the tool is always staying up to date with the consumers constantly changing behavior. Salesforce also does a great job of listening to their customer’s requests so these system updates contain requests from people actually using the tool. Salesforce CPF provides companies with one centralized area for both internal and external teams to collaborate on and view their KPIs in real time. CEOs can jump in at any time to see the ongoing process and comment if they need to. The advanced tool can also support custom equations required in the planning and forecasting process. This information can automatically be analyzed and displayed in reports & dashboards so CEOs can review them at any time of the day without needing to wait.
    • KPI Reports and Dashboards: Typically, CEOs need to wait for meetings with department heads to view sales planning and forecasting KPIs. It takes time to gather this information, and then even more time to prepare it for a presentation.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides one dashboard for CEOs to view all KPIs in real time. Comprised of multiple reports, this dashboard can be modified exactly how the viewer would like. It can contain out-of-the-box reports as well as the company’s custom KPIs.

Sales Manager
Sales managers are responsible for managing the sales team and ensuring that sales goals are met. They are heavily involved in creating and reviewing sales forecasts. The CSO oversees the sales team and is responsible for meeting revenue targets.

    • Inaccurate Data: Accurate data is always required to forecast sales but too often Sales Managers face challenges in obtaining access to this. Data is either already outdated by the time it reaches the Sales Manager, or there is simply not enough. Inaccurate or incomplete data leads to inaccurate sales forecasts, severely impacting the overall sales strategy.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a centralized platform for all customer data: purchase history, preferences, demographics, and much more. This reduces the likelihood of data errors caused by hosting this info across siloed systems. CPF provides real-time reports and dashboards to track the progress of each department and make data-driven decisions based on accurate data.
    • Inefficient & Manual Processes: The sales planning and forecasting process is extremely time-consuming and complex, which tends to lead to inefficiencies across the board. There are many players involved in the process, leading to additional errors. Sales managers often have to manually gather and consolidate data from multiple sources, a tedious and error-prone process.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF speeds up manual tasks via automated data collection and analysis, real-time updates and alerts, forecasting accuracy, and enhanced collaboration and communication. It also gives clients AI-powered forecasting capabilities that use algorithms to analyze historical data, current trends, and additional critical info. This eliminates the need for error-prone manual data entry and saves Sales managers tons of time.
    • Poor Team Collaboration: Sales forecasts constantly need to be communicated to stakeholders but poor communication can lead to misunderstandings and misalignments. Departments need to be completely transparent as certain processes can’t be started until others are completed correctly. Constant communication helps fellow department heads with expectations so that they can hit the ground running when they need to contribute. Sales Managers need to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page to execute sales forecasting quickly and accurately.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Email notifications containing the latest sales forecasting updates can automatically be scheduled to send to key members. These notifications can be customized to show the details each client prefers. The data is in real-time so that reports aren’t already outdated as they are with archaic systems such as Excel and others.
    • Limited Visibility: Sales Managers require visibility into the sales pipeline to accurately forecast future sales, but often, they may not have complete visibility. Some parts may require information to be sent from colleagues, slowing the process down. Not having access to all of the data makes it difficult to identify potential roadblocks and opportunities for improvement.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF gives Sales Managers a comprehensive view of every detail across each department that is related to the planning and forecasting process and sales pipeline. Without the need to access different systems to view key data, this rapidly accelerates the planning process and reduces the manual time spent consolidating the data into one view.
    • Unforeseen Market Changes: Unforeseen market changes can drastically impact sales forecasts and catch everyone off guard. These changes include economic factors, changes in consumer behavior, and shifts in the competitive landscape. Sales Managers need to adapt quickly to these changes and adjust their forecasts accordingly. The problem is, no human can accurately predict what’s going to happen in the future.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Scenario Planning within CPF helps create different scenarios and models to simulate the impact of possible market changes on one’s sales performance. This helps Sales Managers understand the potential risks and opportunities associated with different market scenarios. If these market changes happen, Sales Managers are well prepared to adjust to “plan B” without major profit loss.

Financial Teams
Financial analysts may be involved in creating financial models and analyzing data to help inform sales forecasts.

    • Disconnected Systems and Processes: 77% of planning processes depend on having access to accurate data. As Excel spreadsheets quickly become outdated daily, finance teams need to ensure their data is always updated. Consolidating data from multiple sources is time-consuming and extremely error-prone. By the time the data is collected and consolidated, it can already be outdated upon sharing it with other teams. Forwarding inaccurate data to other departments only continues to decrease the accuracy of the overall sales forecast. Excel spreadsheets also can’t support the infinite number of calculations and macros that a professional planning and forecasting tool can.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF gives companies one platform for all internal and external departments to run every step of the planning and forecasting process within. All data within the tool is up to date and accessible at any time of the day. So financial teams can access data after hours without needing to wait for other team members to provide them with the necessary info.
    • Time-Consuming Manual Tasks: Finance teams can’t afford any slow-downs within their processes. They need to generate timely insights, but many teams spend too much time sorting and organizing data instead of actually analyzing it.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: CPF provides financial teams with the power of bringing their own custom processes onto the Salesforce platform, streamlining it for maximum efficiency. This also keeps all members of the finance team on the same page, where other departments (heads) can also see how things are progressing in real-time. This allows them to get prepared to either act on the incoming data or provide whatever is needed to the finance team.
    • Lack of Team/Departmental Collaboration: Finance teams rely on information provided by other departments to do their job, and vice versa. When companies use multiple systems for planning and forecasting, info-sharing is slowed down tremendously.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Real-time data gives all departments insight into the information provided by their peers in separate departments. Finance doesn’t need to wait “X” days for a sales report to come in; they can simply grab this info within Salesforce at any time of the day. Collaborative forecasting enables companies to move away from disparate and isolated forecasting activities to a unified, real-time enterprise forecasting process.
    • Outdated Information: Finance needs up-to-the-minute information and they are under constant pressure to deliver these actionable insights to assist in decision-making. The lack of accurate, real-time data limits the level of detail that financial planning systems can provide.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF helps with self-service analytics to enable real-time reporting, assisting finance teams in understanding which revenue sources are underperforming, how to improve operational efficiencies, analyze the company’s performance, and develop an achievable plan for driving growth.

Product Managers
Product managers may be involved in forecasting demand for products or services to ensure that production and delivery processes run smoothly. Operations managers may be involved in forecasting demand for products or services to ensure that production and delivery processes run smoothly.

    • Inaccurate Data: Without accurate data, PMs are essentially working in the dark to develop and ship successful products. Bad data makes it difficult to make informed decisions, making it harder to move forward strategically and accurately. These manual efforts are typically error-prone.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides one system to hold all key data: customer info, market research, user info, and product info. This ensures data is accurate and up to date. The tool also eliminates the constant human-caused errors and gives PMs extra time to focus on major tasks while Salesforce CPF takes care of the tedious, repetitive ones.
    • Forecasting Delivery & Timelines: There are too many variables that it’s nearly impossible to manually predict an accurate delivery timeline. Humans also tend to underestimate the time it takes to accomplish a task. This risks overpromising and under-delivering.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: CPF helps accurately build timelines based on historical data, and future predictions. These have already been shown to be more accurate than predictions made by humans. Timelines are shared in the system for quick adjustments that can be viewed and sent out immediately.
    • Aligning Teams and Getting Buy-In: All department leaders have different objectives and priorities, leading to competing visions for the product’s direction. PMs need to navigate these priorities and bridge the gap between teams, stakeholders, and leaders. Without a centralized hub, PMs and department leaders are disconnected and can’t execute what needs to be done through emails and spreadsheets.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a centralized platform for all key leaders and stakeholders to view both company-wide and departmental KPIs in real-time. No more waiting for spreadsheets to be built, cleaned up, and shared by each department, containing outdated info by the time it reaches the recipient.
    • Overwhelming Product Backlog: PMs need the entire product backlog to be visible, transparent, and clear to all stakeholders and developers. Without this, they risk misalignment of the entire team’s goals, accountabilities, and deadlines.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: The Product Roadmap provides companies with complete, real-time transparency throughout the entire process. This keeps everyone in the know, 24/7. Real-time updates can be scheduled to send automatically, or at the click of a button, alerting all appropriate teams of key updates.

CMO
The CMO is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s marketing strategy. They may be involved in market research and analysis to inform the customer planning and forecasting process. Marketing managers may be responsible for conducting market research and analyzing customer data to inform the customer planning and forecasting process.

    • Review Sales History and Make Predictions: Marketers need to utilize past sales data to help provide predictions to sales teams for the upcoming period. Having to wait for, and comb through multiple spreadsheets is too time-consuming and error-prone. Today’s marketers need a system that can streamline this process.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF holds all historical sales data across different departments of the company that is available 24/7. Marketers no longer have to wait for sales teams to find and clean up their spreadsheets before sharing them. CPF’s platform provides a collaborative area where marketers can ask questions, and see other questions from all departments that may help them accomplish their goals.
    • Provide Historical Campaign Data: Which marketing campaigns had the highest ROI? Which ones underperformed? Marketers need to gather this data, run an analysis, and debrief sales on the findings. Without a centralized platform to hold these details, marketers are using outdated information in their process. This information is key in letting sales teams know which content pieces and marketing campaigns resonate best with customers.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: The Salesforce CPF platform provides one place to hold all key campaign data: internal/external costs, revenue, and any custom information. Advanced analytics can accomplish in just minutes what takes human marketers days, sometimes weeks to complete in regards to campaign analysis. Prediction models can provide accurate predictions on how proposed marketing campaigns will perform in the upcoming period(s).
    • Tracking Always-Changing Customer Data: Marketers are responsible for collecting historical customer behavior, analyzing it, and providing predictions for the upcoming period. They need to provide the optimal price for a product based on this market research combined with their competitive landscape. With customer behavior constantly changing, this is an extremely time-consuming effort.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: With CPF, marketers have all the historical customer data in one place. The tool can analyze the data, revealing certain trends and insights that the human eye may not catch. This is all done quicker and more accurately than any human can do. Salesforce CPF can take the analysis and provide marketers with predictions for the year which can then be shared with sales teams. This action saves days’ worth of time.

In conclusion, the sales planning and forecasting process can be a daunting task for businesses, but it is a necessary one to ensure success. The traditional approach can be archaic, time-consuming, and error-prone, leading to frustration and inefficiencies. By adopting Salesforce customer planning and forecasting, businesses can streamline the entire process, freeing up time for all department heads and providing more accurate predictions. With its advanced capabilities, businesses can make informed decisions, meet sales targets, and stay ahead of the competition. By embracing technology and innovation, businesses can take control of their sales planning and forecasting process and position themselves for growth and success.

Start using Salesforce TPM within 3 Months

Companies spend 20% of their annual revenue on trade spend (neal) and 72% of those companies located in the US end up losing money (mckinsey). Why? Products are going out of stock, poor setups of promotional materials, or inaccurate price labeling are just a few of the contributing reasons for these lackluster performances. There has been a drastic change in consumer behavior over the past few years and tools such as Microsoft Excel and homegrown ERPs aren’t able to help companies keep up anymore (23% of companies today manage trade promotions on Excel). Newer technology has made it easier to avoid these common issues, and the industry has been turning towards a massive digital transformation as the resolution. Software such as Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) helps companies optimize trade spending, invest in the right activations, and spend more time selling. The industry is turning towards a tool such as Salesforce TPM to ultimately maximize the ROI of their promotions.

Our Salesforce TPM Starter Package is a cost-effective package that helps companies get up and running within 3-4 months. Key Account Managers will be able to utilize the trade calendar, customer & product hierarchies, promotion & tactics templates, promotion and account P&L, and reports & dashboards. Please download our Salesforce TPM Starter Package data sheet to see all of the details and pricing.

Learn more about our Salesforce TPM for Consumer Goods Cloud services on our website.

How Salesforce Trade Promotion Management Solves These Top 3 TPM Challenges

Top 3 TPM Challenges

Defining Trade Promotion Management and its Immediate Necessity

Trade promotion is a marketing technique aimed at increasing sales of a product by making it more attractive to potential customers. A great example is the ‘Buy One Get One Free’ promotion that we see everywhere in stores. There are multiple departments involved, with many cumbersome processes involved. In today’s fast-paced world, companies are turning to new technology to support these processes. Trade Promotion Management (TPM) is the process of streamlining promotions planning, breaking down silos, and creating a single source of truth that helps maximize trade spend effectiveness. It provides in-depth insight into the volume and profitability of trade promotions to help manufacturers improve their business, and aids in gathering real-time data to produce actionable information.

Even before COVID-19, changes in consumer behavior were driving companies to shift to a digital strategy. The pandemic made it clear that cross-functional collaboration among supply chains, finance, and marketing needs to be more structured than ever before. With companies putting out 20% of annual revenue towards promotions on average (McKinsey), TPM software reduces the possibility of leaving money on the table or overspending. Without TPM software, companies in the US are losing 72% of revenue with promotions, and about 55% don’t even break even (Repsly). Most companies don’t realize these large losses due to not having analytics to easily show this data; one of the main challenges facing TPM. Other harmful challenges include having outdated & unscalable technology and time-consuming manual processes that have become archaic in today’s world.

Outdated and Unscalable Technology

Many companies use ERPs combined with Microsoft Excel to run most of their trade promotions. While effective to start, these systems quickly become outdated. They do not have the required intelligence and planning built within them to manage a company’s promotions. For example, the manually built experiences never capture the entire process and are difficult to scale along with the constantly-growing company. Homegrown technologies aren’t usually the most user-friendly either. With the primary focus on “just making it work”, UI always gets left behind. If users aren’t finding the technology effective to use, user adoption always suffers. Internally built systems also consistently “break” and are costly to fix, requiring constant updates that delay everyday users. If the main architect leaves the company, it’s extremely difficult to pick up where they left off. Hiring a new architect will be costly as they need to review the entire structure, and typically need to make their own updates in order to take control of it.

A TPM software, such as Salesforce TPM, provides world-class technology to help companies control every technological aspect of their trade promotion. Using industry best practices, Salesforce TPM takes the processes and technologies that have helped Retail and Consumer Goods companies plan, execute, and track promotions and provides them to all customers. The system is scalable, sound, and constantly updated with new features to help its customers. The extremely user-friendly TPM system also makes it easier than ever for anyone involved to use the system. Available training is also available for users to understand their system and even suggest new ideas to their Admins to further enhance the customizable solution.

Time-Consuming Archaic & Manual Processes

An Account Manager’s time is stretched thin between planning, developing, and implementing promotions. These labor-intensive tasks can be extremely time-consuming without TPM software. They also need to coordinate with field reps, drive store initiatives to ensure stock is fulfilled, and analyze if they drove positive ROI. Having to complete all these tasks manually results in high overhead and potential data entry errors, causing headaches, requiring steps to be redone, ultimately slowing processes down, and costing the company money. That’s only the Account Manager. Rinse and repeat for District/Territory Managers, Sales Reps, Merchandisers, and the rest of the team, and the entire process can be extremely costly. Manually copying and pasting promotions without adjustments no longer work in today’s world either. Managers need to make adjustments before and during promotions, and doing so manually is cumbersome.

TPM software completely streamlines the entire trade promotion process, while allowing real-time visibility into the entire process. No more waiting for specific excel sheets from one person. Managers can quickly drill down into the Account or Store level, see promotion performance, and make adjustments on the fly within minutes in order to boost sales. Email notifications are automatically sent out based on these updates, ensuring everyone is kept in the loop without any surprises. Promotions can easily be cloned via drag and drop, where Reps can make adjustments that take effect immediately. Trade budgets and accrued liabilities data are in real-time so Account Managers can verify available funding to support trade plans and match claims with payment once the promotion has finished. TPM software allows teams to spend more time selling, rather than getting stuck in the manual processes. These are just a few ways TPM software is accelerating the industry.

No Easy Access to Analytics

On average, 60% of promotions go unevaluated due to the lack of analytical tools and staffing (Pointstitue). Without TPM software, companies are left in the dark when it comes to easily reporting on the success of their promotions. It can take hours to pull together metrics across multiple systems, and there’s always the chance of incorrect numbers being shown. With 72% of US companies actually losing revenue on promotions, managers need to know which ones were unsuccessful so they don’t repeat them year after year (McKinsey). Success metrics including POS growth, primary vs secondary vs tertiary sales, consumer units, incremental and spend ratios, and ultimately ROI need to be readily available in today’s fast-paced world. Manually gathering these metrics across archaic systems is no longer an option. Managers need this information in real-time, with the ability for others to also have access to the data.

Companies can unlock larger ROI from their trade spend investment if they can spot and scale their most profitable programs immediately. TPM software provides easy-to-use analytics that displays all key promotional stats in real time. Salesforce TPM even allows for the ability to easily create custom reports and dashboards to track custom KPIs from company to company. Dashboards can zoom out to display all KPIs across all promotions run that year with the ability to drill down into states, regions, cities, and specific stores. Filters can display KPIs on how specific promotions performed nationwide as well. Analytics allows teams to replicate the highest-performing promotions, and eliminate promotions that fail to break even.

Trade Promotion Management Exceeds the Standard

Without TPM software to help plan, manage, and track promotions, each one is at risk of causing overspending, stock surplus, and negatively impacting the customer’s perception of your company. The RCG industry has undergone massive changes in the last few years, causing new technology to emerge that streamline processes across the company and boosts ROI. Software like Salesforce TPM for Consumer Goods Cloud provides the ability to maximize employee productivity and maximize ROI on trade promotions.

Most Valuable Salesforce Summer ’22 Release Features

Salesforce has just released its Summer ’22 release notes and we’ve compiled some of our favorites below. Keep scrolling to see when these features will become available to you.

Sales Cloud

    • Close cases quicker with Einstein search – Help case agents find solutions and knowledge articles quicker through an optimized search manager.
    • Estimate your ROI for Lead Scoring – The Einstein Readiness Assessor estimates the value of Einstein Lead Scoring for your custom instance. It’s based on your lead acquisition and conversion numbers.
    • Create Custom Address Fields – You are now able to create custom fields that mimic the same behavior as standard address fields. This comes at an extremely fortunate time when many people work from home, but can also be used to track multiple warehouses and other offices.
    • Clean up inactive picklist values – Users are able to bulk delete inactive unused picklist values rather than having to do so one at a time. You can also activate, deactivate, or replace multiple custom picklist values at once.
    • Find the best report type for new reports – Have you ever created a Salesforce report only for it not to display the specific data and objects you were expecting? A newly enhanced report type selector allows users to quickly access recently used report types and view the objects and fields that are available.

Consumer Goods Clouds

    • Schedule Visits to the Right Stores at the Right Time – Use Einstein Visit Recommendation to keep your products front and center. Sales managers can select a group of stores to receive recommendations on which ones to visit, and when.
    • Ensure Timely Deliveries to Stores – Managers can prioritize orders that the highest selling stores to make sure they’re restocked first. Delivery tasks can be assigned to drivers, who receive instant notifications on their mobile devices.

Service Cloud

    • Deflect cases with Einstein Article Recommendations for Flows – Enable smart email auto-responses to quickly answer customer questions, providing knowledge articles within minutes. Accessible from within Flow Builder.
    • Make Smarter Routing Decisions – Designate a queue or skill-based information about your agents’ capacity to automatically designate new work requests more efficiently. For example, if an agent has more than 3 cases in their queue, the system can automatically route the new case to someone else.
    • Save Agents time with Einstein Article Recommendations – Use AI to recommend relevant knowledge articles to agents as live conversations happen. Reduce the time agents spend on each case while increasing customer satisfaction.

 

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot)

    • Send Slack notifications with Completion Actions – Marketers can now use a completion action to notify a Slack channel to speed up your pipeline. Beat out your competition by responding to leads first and adding this action to your most important assets and forms.
    • Automate More with Completion Action Enhancements – You can apply completion actions to subsets of prospects who meet certain criteria. For example, you can assign prospects who live in Washington to your sales team located within Washington.

 

Pre-Release Org Feature Testing

A pre-release org is the safest way to test the new features before it comes available in your Sandbox. Please click here to sign-up. Remember that pre-release orgs will not have the customizations that your current live system has.

Sandbox Feature Testing

On May 7th, users will be able to test the new Summer ’22 features within their own Sandbox. This allows users to test out how the new features will work with their fully customized system and processes. Most Sandboxes will be automatically updated on Mayth 7th.

Salesforce Summer ’22 Feature Release Dates

Salesforce plans to release the Summer ’22 features across all live instances on the following dates:

    • May 21st, 2022
    • June 4th, 2022
    • June 11th, 2022

Features will be released in your Salesforce depending on your instance. Visit Salesforce Trust, select your instance name, and visit the “Maintenance” tab to see the date your org will be updated. To find your instance, visit the company information tab within setup in your Salesforce.

Full Summer ’22 Release Timeline

salesfore summer 22 release timeline

Pardot Renamed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

On April 6th, Salesforce changed the name of their B2B marketing automation tool, Pardot, to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. You may be familiar with Marketing Cloud, Salesforce’s B2C digital marketing automation and analytics software. We’ll take a look at the “why” behind the big name change, and look at a few other new name changes as well.

All Name Changes

    • Salesforce CDP → Customer Data Platform
    • Interaction Studio → Personalization
    • Email, Mobile, Ad, Journey Studios → Engagement
    • Pardot → Account Engagement
    • Datorama → Intelligence

The “Why”

With these name changes, Salesforce is making Marketing Cloud more consistent and more understandable to marketers looking at the entire platform. It’s not just name changes either, Salesforce is continuing to integrate with these best-of-breed technologies, making their CRM even more powerful than before.

    • Aligning with the marketer’s language – Salesforce has aligned its Marketing Cloud products with terms that marketers use in their day-to-day activities to help make their values easier to understand. For example, “many marketers are looking for the capability and value of real-time Personalization, not an ‘Interaction Studio’” (Salesforce). Marketing Cloud’s previous naming convention came from add-ons that have been acquired by Salesforce and kept their original name.
    • Continued unification – Salesforce’s unified platform is one reason it’s the #1 CRM.  This renaming further shows users that Salesforce continues to integrate best-of-breed technology within their system. Products are continuing to receive advanced integrations within each other, giving users access to quality data and technology they’ve never had before.
    • Future enhancements –  These changes create new pathways down Salesforce’s product roadmap. Recently, Marketing Cloud added WhatsApp and Snapchat for advertising, targeting, messaging, and more. Integrations like these continue to be made, as the marketer’s strategy changes frequently.

Takeaways

    • Blending B2B and B2C – Pardot has always been labeled as the B2B marketing automation tool, whereas Marketing Cloud is for B2C marketing. Recently, B2B and B2C marketing have never been closer than before, overlapping in many buying qualities and strategies. With the recent trend of B2B and B2C blending, this takes another step in the right direction.
    • No Account Access – One of the most frequently asked questions since the name change has been “does Account Engagement (Pardot) now have more than read-only access to Account objects”? Currently, Account Engagement still only has bi-directional updates with the Lead and Contact objects within Salesforce. Nothing in Salesforce’s current roadmaps state otherwise, but this could be the beginning of that process!
    • Some things stay the same – Most things are staying the same, especially underneath the Account Engagement hood:
      • Pricing and packages
      • SKU names on your Salesforce contract
      • Features and functionality

Pardot’s name change to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is a big deal, but don’t forget all of the other name changes listed earlier. As Salesforce continues to integrate its products even more than before, these names should stay. For now, how do we best say the new name after knowing it as Pardot since 2007? Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Engagement Studios doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as Pardot Engagement Studios does. Account Engagement? MCAE? That’s for us to decide and have fun with. The new “Pardashian” term is just around the corner!

Salesforce’s full article on Marketing Cloud’s name changes.

Thank You, Class of 2020

To our St. Augustine High School Class of 2020 interns:

Nobody could have predicted how this year would go. In January, we were discussing the future and teaching work ethics and helping you all gain a little knowledge of the workplace. You all accepted the challenges we gave you and tackled them head-on. Not once did any of you turn down a job assignment, even though you didn’t have the experience.

You asked questions, gained your knowledge, and proceeded to succeed in your tasks. Now, you face different challenges going forward. Corrao Group has the utmost faith that you will all take these challenges presented to you, examine them, and come to a determination on how best to succeed given those obstacles.

We congratulate Griffin Miller, TJ Roeder, Jonathan Bonanno, and Noah Shroeder as you enter the next phase in your lives. Remember good work ethics are important in school as well. Congratulations to the Class of 2020! We expect to see great things from you Saintsmen!

Griffin Miller – Texas Christian University (TCU)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Bonanno – Point Loma Nazarene University

 

 

 

 

 

 

TJ Roeder – Emory University

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noah Schroeder – University of Dallas

Work From Home Spotlight: Paul Mobley

Today we’re highlighting the first guest of our Work From Home spotlight series: Paul Mobley. Paul leads sales and legal operations at Ephesoft, a tech company in Irvine, CA. “I have always worked where I’ve needed to work,” he mentioned before explaining that he’s worked at multiple WeWork locations, traditional corporate offices, conference rooms, hotel rooms, and from home. A flexible attitude is what makes working from home, and ultimately anywhere, not a large hassle for Paul.

Staying Connected With The Team

Paul says he’s been more communicative than ever before, utilizing many different tools such as Google Hangouts, Salesforce Chatter, and Zoom to keep in touch. His team used this technology before COVID-19, so there was no additional learning curve. He uses whichever communication method is preferable for the situation and the other people’s needs. Instant Messaging may be used for something needed immediately, where Zoom meetings are held for higher priority and more complicated topics. Texts and phone calls are not out of the question, they’re still great ways to have conversations and meetings “on the go” and get some fresh air.

“The internet has changed the distance barrier we used to have,” stated Paul. He explains that in the past, most people thought that we’d have more interaction with someone in the same office compared to someone working remotely. Yet, it could easily be the case where we actually interact more with co-workers that are remote. It comes down to who you report to, who is on your team, and/or who reports to you. Regardless of where employees are located, today’s technology allows us to connect within seconds with the ability to screen share and turn on our videos. It doesn’t matter if that person is in the same building or on the other side of the world.

Spending Extra Free Time

Many people who are new to working from home have some extra time on their hands now that they don’t commute to and from the office. Some use the specific time they usually spend in the morning driving to work on other activities such as walking, meditating, reading, listening to the news, sleeping in, the list goes on. Paul doesn’t think of it in a way that it gives him extra time, but that it allows him to allocate his time throughout the day more effectively. He sometimes uses that time early in the morning to get a head start on the day and block out time later in the day for a break to refuel and refresh.

“Taking small risks is like trying new foods. As our palettes change, it gives us more opportunities to try new things.”

This “extra time” also allows us the freedom to try something new. It’s time for employees to step up and take on more responsibility within the company if they have the time. It could be learning more in-depth about other departments’ processes within the company or more about current customers’ needs to see how you can further help them solve business challenges. This time can also be used to recover from a stressful day. Paul also enjoys regular bike rides to clear his head during busy days. Finding your head-clearing activity can help reset when it feels like you’ve been working for too long.

Being Authentic and Developing Closer Relationships With Your Team

Working from home gives employees the ability to show their personality today more than ever before. At the office, we are allowed to have pictures, fun mugs, and other items on our desk, but it’s never as personal as what’s at home. Paul recommends you go into meetings with the mindset of it being held on your terms versus the company’s because it’s in your personal space. You get to choose how public or private you want to be when you attend a meeting from your own home. When meetings are held in the office, it’s standard to wear nicer clothes, have no distractions, etc. At home, the expectations are different and it allows us to show our authentic selves through the clothing we wear, our backgrounds, and our overall presentation. We are only limited by our creativity. For example, sometimes he feels cooped up inside and needs a change of pace. Using wifi on his computer or using the data connection on his phone, Paul has the freedom to roam. Most people on these calls or videos understand this because they may be experiencing similar feelings of being stuck!

“Have fun – you don’t have to work from home, you get to work from home,” said Paul towards the end of our discussion. He mentioned people may not want to lose what they’ve gained while working from home. This could be enjoying a new morning walk routine so much that upon returning to the office, they wake up 20 minutes earlier than usual to walk before heading into the office. It could also include something more substantial, such as a 2-hour mid-day break where employees make up that time later in the evening at home. He doesn’t view working from home as uncomfortable because, “If you live there every day, it shouldn’t be uncomfortable. It’s only uncomfortable because we haven’t done it before.”

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Future Impacts of Working From Home

Employees may come back to a very different office from when they were last there. There could be motion-activated doors and voice-activated elevators, fewer desks, or desks that look entirely different. Working from home could be the new norm with organizations being forced to find ways to successfully do so during Covid-19. While a number of companies will return to the office just as they were, many companies are going to begin working remotely because they can. To successfully run a company from home requires the right management, employees, procedures, and technology. The most likely future impacts of companies working from home include different looking office spaces and new germ/virus protection measures.

New Office Designs

No one will feel comfortable on their first day back in the office if they’re sitting within three feet of their coworkers all day. A few sneezes and coughs later from coworkers and employees will spend more time worrying about not getting sick than getting work done. We are going to see a complete remodeling of how office spaces are laid out going forward. Starting at the building’s entry point, automated doors could become everyday normality. Grocery stores have automated doors and we only visit those a couple of times per week, so why are we touching the building’s entry handle multiple times a day?

                                         “6-Foot Office”

Today, open office floor plans are extremely popular. It allows employees to interact easier in a more collaborative effort than in the past. Prior to this were taller cubicles where employees were separated from each other, but could still stand up to speak to their neighbor next door. The cubicles provided a barrier that many people today might want in order to return to work. While these cubicles may take up more space than the current desks, not as many desks may be needed with some of the company working from home. Although, open floor plans will not completely die off. Other organizations, such as Cushman and Wakefield, are keeping open floor plans and adapting the “6 Feet Office” approach to make employees feel safer.

Antibacterial, Germ and Virus Protection

Companies will soon find that not as much space is needed due to some employees working from home, so not as many cubicles are required either. Some may match a shared space office building where their employees do not have a specific desk they sit in each day. An increase in shared desks requires additional safety measures in order for employees to use a desk that could have been used by a sick employee the day prior. Businesses will have to turn to germ and virus protection solutions to provide a clean workspace. Taking things a step further, there are antibacterial bundled solutions made specifically for specific industries – small businesses, doctor/dental, restaurants, education, etc. They can even come into your organization, perform an audit to see where and what employees interact with to then provide solutions that fit your custom environment.

These germ-killing solutions will be critical even beyond desks and into break rooms, conference rooms, individual offices, and other shared spaces. When employees first return to the office, conference rooms may be off-limits, and break rooms may only be visited to grab or store something in the fridge quickly. Companies can make their employees feel more comfortable with door handles, UV lights, and other solutions that reduce 99.9% of germs on surfaces.

What Makes Your Employees More Comfortable?

No matter what companies do to make their employees feel safer upon first returning to work, they’re still going to be uneasy. Even if they were isolated in a recently-disinfected room all day, there’s nothing that will rid them of all their uneasiness. Companies must do whatever it takes to make their employees feel comfortable returning to work. Since each group is different, we encourage companies to ask their own employees what would make them feel more comfortable. Whether it’s office furniture, cleaning products, or new procedures, the requests could range from A-Z. Coastal Health USA offers services to come onsite to your facility to recommend antimicrobial solutions to help reduce germs and viruses at your company.

Ensure Your Employees are Setup for Success At Home

Work from home (WFH) employees are not the same worker as they are when they’re in the office. They have different surroundings, applications, and family or friends around them. With an entirely new setup, some may have never worked from home before; they might need appropriate furniture and technology requirements, including better WiFi. Other employees may already be working remotely and have their own setup. It is recommended that this group shares their experiences when working from home with the rest of the company. We’ll cover the most notable differences between how an employee works at the office compared to how they work from home.

Environmental Distractions

Depending on one’s office and department, their office setting could either be louder or quieter than their home setting. There are co-workers on calls, typing and printer noises, doors opening and closing, etc. At home, there could be children playing or being homeschooled, landscaping outside, or friends/family in the other room watching TV. In smaller settings, loud neighbors working from their homes could cause a daily distraction. Noise-canceling headphones may be better for the home office because it’s more appropriate to drown out outside noises than valuable insights from their coworkers.

Systems and Technology

When employees are given all the technology and resources their job requires, they are set up for success. They’re able to login to secure systems, print or scan anything they need, and have access to a great internet connection. At home, they might not be able to recreate the same setup. Many employees may be working on kitchen or foldout tables in chairs that are not designed to be used all day. If they’re lucky, they are able to bring home an extra monitor from work. While working from home, additional virtual meetings are required for companies to check in more frequently as they normally would in the office. This requires a robust internet connection and if two people are now working from home, the current WiFi plan may need to be upgraded to the next level. If children are conducting school online, it will only put even more stress on the WiFi. Upgraded WiFi is one thing companies have been helping their employees with.

With CRM technologies like Salesforce, many companies can successfully work from home without skipping a beat. Businesses of all industries and sizes can optimize their entire company with Salesforce while empowering employees to collaborate while working from home. All leads and contacts, deals, service tickets, contracts and more are stored in real-time backed by automated processes to make sure steps are followed and nothing falls through the cracks. Users can log in both at the office as well as at home, and be productive no matter which setting.

How to Help Your Employees Work From Home

  • Research if your company can create and fund a requirements checklist for your employees to work from home. See if your employees require items like monitors, chairs, and desks to enhance their productivity.
  • Onboard the company to an instant messaging program. Programs like Microsoft Teams, Skype, and Zoom are the most popular applications to keep your company connected.
  • Provide access to applications that your business processes are tied into. If it’s their first time working from home, make sure the IT department has enabled any remote access to applications. Ensure all security measures are followed and that any confident data is stored on a locked and secure device.

 

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Entertaining and Necessary Things to do While Staying Inside

With a great number of people asked to stay inside during this time, one can run out of things to do fast. There is only so much television we can watch, books to read, and other things before something new is needed. We’ve put together a list of things to do during the week that can help out in many different areas. The list includes activities that are both fun and also tasks that should make you feel more accomplished while staying inside.

Review Budgets to Save Money

Review your monthly subscriptions for necessity
– Business Subscriptions, Music, Clothes, Food – are these necessary for the next couple of months?

Update Family Budgets
– How does eating out less and cooking more affect your situation?
– Contact your Gym to make sure you’re not paying for this month.
– What are your cost savings for gas as well as time not in traffic?
– Can you adjust your car insurance, based in miles, for the next 3 months?

Create a simple spreadsheet with 2 columns, “WFO” and “WFH”, and compare the costs to see how much you’re saving and where you can save more.

Productive Activities Around the House

Clean up the garage
– It’s time, don’t hold it off any longer. Keep the door open as well to get some fresh air.
– If you find things that you don’t need anymore, donate it to help people in need right now.

Change the oil and fluids in your car(s)
– It might be a good time for a self-detail as well.
– If you have children make this fun and educational for them!

Fix things around the house
– Loose screws, squeaky doors/cabinets; now is a good time to fix those.
– Lightbulbs and batteries for alarms.
– Have you always wanted to paint that room? It’s time to schedule this on your calendar if so.

Cook an extraordinary dinner!
– Take out that day-long recipe you’ve always wanted to cook and get to it. Make sure that if someone else is enjoying your dish, they do the dishes – it’s the rules.
– Kick off a Zoom meeting and have a virtual potluck with your friends and family.

Clean more
– Cleaning more frequently makes it less of a task each time you do it. Having a clean space can also boost productivity and happiness.
– This is a great task to keep the kids busy. Make it a fun project and reward them for completing their jobs.

Catch up on entertainment
– Pull up the list of shows and movies your friends have been telling you to watch. Call your friends afterward to discuss it and catch up. If you’re fortunate to have kids, show them one of your favorite movies from when you were their age.

Go through the family photos
– Relive all the great times over the years through your photos. Send pictures to anyone else in the older photos to connect with them!

Get ready for summer by cleaning the backyard and planting the garden
– This is a great exercise to do with family and could be great for the kids to learn how to pull weeds! A win-win situation.

Game Nights, Trip-Planning and More

Family game nights
– Break out all of the board games and make it a fun night. Maybe even tally the wins per player over the next few weeks and see who is the ultimate game night champion!

Learn an instrument
– Have an old instrument in the garage you never finished learning? Dust it off and look at some free online videos for help. Maybe someone else in the family would like to learn with you.

Plan a trip
– Plan for a future trip. Do all the research about places to stay, visit, and dine at. Plan for a few trips and figure out which ones to take first.
Stay connected with your extended family and friends.
– If they are not tech-savvy, show them how to use tools like Skype and Zoom. You could play games such as chess and others through video chat.
– Schedule frequent calls to stay connected and foster a positive mental outlook.

These are some activities you can do both during the week as well as the weekend. This is only a small list – there are thousands of other activities you can do. If you’d like to stay up to date on other things to do during this time, please fill out the form below and we’ll send you an email each time we post content like this. Always wash your hands multiple times per day! If your hands feel dryer than usual, it’s because you are washing them more frequently than usual – find some lotion to help keep your hands from getting too dry. Set reminders to get fresh air and go for walks.

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